History
by QueenRiley
Summary: How one lost little boy went from bad to worse. Power Rangers RPM


It had started when he was eleven. He'd been at the orphanage with Nurse Valentine for five years and it was clear he, like most of the other big kids, wasn't going anywhere. People didn't generally line up to adopt the older children. He knew the teenagers would do it, had seen them, knew they didn't take much and they kept it for themselves. He hadn't thought of trying it for himself, not really. He hadn't actually meant to take anything at all, but once he had, it became so easy to do it again, to be like the bigger kids. When they knew he was doing it, they didn't try to beat him up anymore. He liked that.

Really he'd only been looking at it, that first time. There was a new girl. She'd just lost her mother and father. She was small, she was scared, and she had nothing left. She was alone. The nurses, they'd tried to get her to smile, to get her to open up, but she wouldn't do it. She wouldn't talk, she'd barely eat. He knew what it was like to lose everything you ever loved. He didn't want her to be sad anymore, not like he was, and so he'd just picked up the charm bracelet to have a look. Nurse Mary Catherine had scolded him for lagging behind and grabbed his hand, as if he were a small child, to drag him behind her. She was in such a rush he hadn't been able to tell her about the bracelet. He had no money himself and as he was pulled through the aisles of the store, it was so easy to just slip the bracelet in his pocket. Nobody noticed. Nobody saw. He wasn't sure anybody even cared. It was just a little bracelet, after all.

She had been so happy when he gave it to her. She put it on and hugged him and cried, but she smiled. It was the first smile out of her and she'd opened up after that. If one little bracelet could bring so much happiness to one little girl in need, well surely it wasn't a bad thing that he had taken it, right? It's not as if the stores were hurting for money. He knew the executives rolled around in limousines and private jets with their fancy business suits and big corporate offices. They weren't hurting… they wouldn't miss a small item here or there. And it had made a little girl with nobody and nothing left so happy. It gave her something to hold on to. And growing up in an orphanage, they all needed something, anything, to hold on to.

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He didn't take much and he didn't do it often, but he was good at it. He'd take a small gift for a new kid or new crayons for the toddler room. He'd take what he could and slip it away and nobody ever saw, nobody ever stopped him, nobody ever said a word. He just wanted to help, you see. There was so much pain in the world, so much suffering. He saw it every day. He felt it himself, every day, waking up in a room with three other boys on thin government issue mattresses with scratchy blankets and communal toothpaste in the large institutional bathrooms. They were well cared for, sure, but little surprise gifts went a far cry longer to cheering up a lonely little kid than a visit from a puppy they couldn't keep or other people's trash passed off as quality goods.

He was thirteen before he got caught. They'd made him sit in a tiny office with no windows. It smelled old and moldy and he'd hated it. He'd managed to look contrite and apologized profusely, promising never to do it again. They believed him right off the bat, he could see it. All he had to do was purse his lips, frown a little, and force a few tears to well up in overly large eyes. They'd given him a scolding and sent him home with a very apologetic Nurse Valentine. Nurse Valentine moved him from breakfast duty to bathroom duty for an entire month and had given him a good long talking to as well. She'd told him how disappointed she was, what a good boy she knew he could be, and how wrong it was to steal. She'd told him not to follow in the footsteps of the older boys he used to admire so. Their path led to trouble and he was too innocent, too gentle for that life. He was worth more than that, she'd said. He promised to never do it again when really all he meant was he promised to not get caught.

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Six months later he was back in a different little office with no windows, but this time he had a police officer asking him questions and lecturing. Nurse Valentine let them take him down to the jail to show him around. It was cold and grey, dark and dangerous. The men in there were tired and desperate, but at least they had three square meals a day and the same government issue mattresses to sleep on. He'd always had a knack at reading people and while the police only saw hardened criminals who just didn't care, he saw scared old men who were so lonely they'd given up ever having anything. He knew they were trying to scare him into behaving and so he did what they wanted. He acted worried, said he didn't want to go to jail, and promised never to shoplift again. He kept that promise. If the stores would only give him what he wanted for money, he'd give it to them. He'd just have to steal the money before he went to the store.

For the first time in his life, it paid off that he was smaller than everyone else. His years of trying to blend into the crowd to avoid getting the snot beaten out of him made it easy to blend in to avoid being seen at all. He was skinny, he was young, and he was inconspicuous. He was just another kid hanging around the park or a mall.

It was easy to learn. He had slender fingers and a delicate touch. People didn't pay attention and it was easy to lift a wallet out of a handbag or backpack. Once he'd mastered doing that without detection, he moved on to back pockets, jacket pockets, and even whole money clips. He never took more than he thought he needed, though, and he was sure to return anything left. Most of the time they never even knew he had taken anything at all.

He looked young for his age, was smaller than most kids his age, and had what Nurse Mary Catherine liked to call "the face of an angel". If somebody noticed their pocketbook missing, they never once suspected the polite and cheerful young man standing next to them. Sometimes they would ask him to help them look for something they'd misplaced and he, being the considerate boy that he was, would spend upwards of an hour helping them search, never letting on that he knew exactly where their missing item was.

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He was sixteen before he was caught and sent to the courts. He hated the look on Nurse Valentine's face when the cops pulled him away in the back of the police car. Hated it, but not enough to stop. He'd bought food, sweets for the little ones, toys, games, books. He'd brought a smile to the face of nearly every child that had come through the orphanage with him, be it temporary custody or permanent residence. He'd even stolen to buy supplies for charity magic shows. He liked magic tricks. The sleight of hand needed to perform most of the tricks was good practice for lifting wallets. Plus it made the kids happy. That's all he really wanted, in the end; to make the kids happy.

The courts let him go that time, warned him never to darken their door again. He was beginning to realize he had a knack for more than just picking pockets and lifting merchandise. He seemed able to convince anybody of anything, just by sheer force of will. If he believed it hard enough, everybody else would as well. He'd practiced on the people he stole from, on the police, even on the judges in court. He wasn't sure how he did it and maybe it was his youthful appearance, but people just wanted to believe that he was innocent.

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He'd taken to using his skills to get people to hand cash over willingly. It didn't take much effort most days and by the time he was seventeen he could get as much or as little money out of a crowd as he wanted. All he had to do was flash a bright smile and tell some sob story. Some days, when he was really brave, he'd tell stories of grandeur. He'd spin tales of things he hadn't really accomplished, events that hadn't really taken place, and he'd have groups of people hanging on his every word. Sometimes he'd say he was working for a charity and spin a tale of some poor children somewhere that needed something and only the monetary donations of the fine people in front of him could help. It wasn't really lying, he supposed. The money did go to help poor children. After all, nobody was ever rich while living in an orphanage.

He had some rough days. Days his stories didn't catch, days he couldn't enthrall people. Those were the times he'd have to find a new location to work lest regulars recognized him. He was fascinating enough to capture attention when he needed to, but ordinary enough to almost immediately be forgotten, most of the time. He could work one area for months and get money out of regulars every single day and they would never make the connection that the wiry boy from today was the same wiry boy from last Tuesday. On the rough days people would notice. On the rough days he'd have to slip back into his old habit of picking pockets.

He was having one such rough day when he picked the pocket of a man in a fine suit. He'd not even finished pulling the wallet out when a hand reached behind and grabbed his own. He nearly fell over with the shock. The man was quiet, didn't draw attention to the situation, and that scared him. There was something dangerous about this man. It had been the first real slip he'd made since he started this whole habit of his six years prior. For once, he'd misjudged a possible target.

"I almost didn't feel that." The man looked down at him over the rim of dark sunglasses. He couldn't answer. Something in this man's voice made his blood run cold.

"I've been watching you. Weeks now, watching you. You're good. I saw you last week with that lady. You managed to convince her that the wallet you had just slid in your pocket wasn't hers and you didn't even need to show her anything. You even helped her look for hers and by the time you took your money and handed the wallet back, she had forgotten she'd ever accused you in the first place." He wouldn't say anything. He couldn't risk incriminating himself.

"You've got talent, kid. A little rough around the edges, need to hone your skills some, but I think you can be polished up. I've got somebody I'd like you to meet. My name's Benny." The gentleman thrust a business card at him. He took it without thinking, looking over both sides, examining it closely. It was just plain card stock with a picture of racing horses on it. It was nondescript, didn't stand out, but he knew that the people who needed to know what it meant would understand right away, and probably cower in fear. He slid it into his pocket and reached out to shake the dangerous man's hand.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Ziggy. Ziggy Grover."


End file.
